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Phoebe's close friend, Randi Olsen, August 2003
23 August 2003
Greenwood, Hudson, Quebec

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Randi Olson remembers her friend Phoebe:

"I grew up in Hudson and obviously heard about Phoebe, because she would have come to live here full time, year round. It was 1960 about the time our family moved here and when she and I started to become really close was when I came back from my travels and work and settled down to have children..."

"Already we had been on African safari with her several times, so we had lots of adventures in East Africa... one of the things that really stuck with me was being in the safari vehicle and watching the wonderful expression on the Africans' faces because Phoebe, in the midst of the Serengeti, is talking with passion, not about Africa but about her roses in her garden here... in the midst of this beautiful thing, and she's talking, talking, talking about home..."

"This place meant so much to her, she was so rooted here, with the garden, the history, the family, a sense of Canadian history and a deep passion for the Native people, that was a thread throughout her life..."

"We worked together many weekends to decorate the church... so people thought she was a bit tough, fussy, but the thing was, she cared so much about details. So when she took on the Chancel work she cared passionately about the details and that it should be done right, and she did more weekends than anyone. She did 7 out of the year, most people did 2 or 3, and each one had a special family connection, and of course Remembrance Day was in memory of her father and that was a big one and when she died, the guild asked me, well what shall we do, because all these are special days, and the one I recommended they keep was June 12 in memory of her parents wedding. I always thought it was so special working on that one with her because she used the lily of the valley that she and her mother had planted under the butternut tree sixty years earlier ...and she used that on the altar..."

Randi suffered a disease with great pain... but Phoebe taught her that service came first...

"A memory that I haven't shared with too many people... for me it was a great learning experience... at the height of my crippling and pain, Phoebe calls me to help her prepare the church for a wedding. And so in a blur of pain I am being told how to assemble flowers... she was very particular and so on... and just hours of arranging these yellow and white flowers... and I'm in so much pain, I have no idea to this day who got married, it was just our task to prepare the church for the wedding the next day. But what a lesson! Because I could hardly move but, so I'm arranging flowers and this was just like a wonderful blessing..."

"She really time traveled as Madame Sabourin, which was her tribute to that part of the history of the house... and that became the favorite of most people who saw her doing historical monologues... She sat in that blue rocking chair by the big hearth fire place and you'll see throughout the house little stools and things, and that was for the children who were such a part of her, and so they would sit at her feet with these little chairs and she just had a marvellous way... people would just go back in time an there you were with this, not Phoebe Hyde... but Madame Sabourin, and you were 250 years ago and right there, and just kind of living the history and getting a real sense, it was just very magical..."

"What a privilege it is to be in a house like this. This has got to be unusual in Canada, to have 250 years of lived history, continuous, with original artifacts, with all this sense of history that's been knowingly kept. Just for people to be able to soak up the atmosphere and the aura of it. I would hope that we could keep some of that atmosphere in tact… the sense of the house ..."

"...you realize this is such a stepping stone to portraying Canada's history, sitting on the river... the original river with the voyageurs, you have the French and Indians starting the story and the English coming in and we can convey so much of Canada's story just from this spot and she must have obviously had the wit to realize the importance and then you add on... her father and his significance as an architect and her grandfather as a doctor and so on, there's just a a lot to the story here and I would hope for people it makes history come alive..."